


The Process of Drowning

by OnniesGirl



Category: Miss Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Depiction of War-time events, Depictions of sexually intimate events, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/F, slight reference to drug use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnniesGirl/pseuds/OnniesGirl
Summary: A short story that I blew a bit out of proportion. My contribution to fangirlingincloset's prompt:"Someone please make a Watolock fanfiction where Watolock already in a relationship, then Wato’s being insecure of her scar in the morning after their first night together. Our tsundere turns adorable Sherlock showing some love for Wato’s scar and kiss the insecurity away…"SUMMARYWato decides to take action one morning against her greatest obstacle. Herself.





	The Process of Drowning

I had been sitting in front of our vanity mirror for a very long time. A feeling of resolution pervading me as I looked at the stranger I had become. I had seen the same look in the eyes of soldiers just before they left the safety of our doctors and marched onto the field. _Into battle_. That’s what I was. I was going into battle.

I had moved the furniture around to give me more space. One of Sherlock’s full length mirrors painstakingly slid behind me so I wouldn’t have to strain. ‘This is it’ I thought, pulling the toner Sherlock had ‘given me’ so long ago out of the drawer and placing it on the table. ‘You can do this, you can do this’. For Sherlock, I would do anything--had done everything. I never knew that love would be like this; what it could bring me to do.

Yet here I was confronting the worst part of me. Clutching the tie of my robes until my knuckles turned white.

Sherlock had gone off earlier to who-knows-where. It wasn't like her to be up before 10 AM but it also wasn't unheard of. The woman was a creature of unusual and unyielding habits, and I did not take the opportunity her absence afforded me for granted.

The house was beginning to smell like Ms. Hatano’s cooking and despite the unease I was feeling it brought a smile to my face. I wondered if she would ever know how comforting she was even when she wasn’t aware of it.

As if on cue, I heard footsteps approaching and the sound of china being rattled. The door opened with a **tah** -

-and in walked Sherlock. Smiling like she had just solved a sordid case and carrying a tray of food.

“Ah ha!--Sausage, tamagoyaki, and miso soup. I asked Ms. Hatano what you might like before she went to see her sister. There is also bread for toast.”

Placing the tray of food down, Sherlock spun around on the tips of her toes, her green house-dress fluttering like butterfly wings in the wind. Hands fidgeting and alive as always. The moment she spotted me through the open door all movement seized.

That was a skill I could never understand. How Sherlock could make a room breathe. Her body conducted air like it was a living thing and now that she was still, it felt like the room held it’s breath.  

Sherlock went into observation mode. Tilting her head to the side, she approached the doorway between our room and the living area like a leopard. Her gaze traveled from me, to my hands, to the mirrors, and finally the bottle of her toner faster than most people could blink. I caught one last glance of myself before looking away. What was I thinking? How could I think doing something like this _here_  would be a good idea?  

"Hmm...I was wrong" 

My head snapped up. Still feeling caught off guard, I tried to get my barrings back.

"Ah-Uh-Um...What?" 

Her eyes softened at me and she gave me the look she always gives when I do something she finds particularly endearing.  

"I was wrong. About the toner" she gestured to the bottle with her chin. "The formula I used. All wrong. That toner's not going to work if it's not properly applied ." She sashayed over to the bottle. 

"Luckily-" she said, scooping it up and practically skipping out the bedroom "-I know how."

"Come into the living room" she beckoned over her shoulder, eyes half-lidded and a smile on her face.

"I'll show you" 

Electricity shot through my stomach.

I followed Sherlock into the living room.

She was opening one of the windows. Sunlight accentuating everything from the small details of her dress to the fly-ways in her hair and not for the first time, I was struck by how absolutely gone on her I was. Sherlock placed a footstool down in the center of the room.

"Sit" 

I didn’t so much ‘sit’ as I did ‘descend vaguely downwards’. 

“I’ve had quite a few years of experience perfecting this toner,” She said while rolling up her sleeves. She padded over to her chemistry kit and took out a pair of gloves and a hand full of cotton pads. She seemed to go into herself for a moment as she fit the gloves on and set everything on a tiny tray I was moderately sure had fingers on it not too long ago. She gave a covert, melancholic glance to the crooks of her arms. “Quite a few years indeed,” she said softly to herself.

With a little push, she parted my legs and knelt into the gap. Her gloves felt odd on my hands.

Pouring the liquid into a cotton square, we sat in silence for a moment while she passed the solution down from my wrist to the tips of my fingers and back again. Back and forth. Back and forth.

“I bet you’ve wondered how Ms. Hatano achieved such healthy looking hands.” She pressed two more cotton squares onto the pad of each gloved thumb. “And glowing skin.” Down each side of my face and gently back up, under my chin to my ears. “It doesn’t take much, nor very long.” She traced a soaked cotton pad over her lips, set her hands on my knees and looked up at me through her eyelashes. I met her half-way.

I had almost forgotten my reason for wanting to use her toner in the first place. With hardly any effort Sherlock had invaded all of me. My hands were her, my breath was her, my mouth was her. She made my lips taste like cucumber and saffron. She made my heart beat hard and steady.

“Skin is easy to maintain. Scars need special care.”

My breath was suddenly caught in my throat. I opened my eyes and found her looking back. This was what made us. Give and Take. I wasn’t ready. I had to be ready. I could give this up.

Sherlock stood up. She didn’t say anything. There was nothing she could say. This was me. My choice. My sacrifice. It hurts.

“Sherlock”

She understood. We loosened the tie at last and slid the sleeves from my shoulders. The fabric pooling at my waist.

Sherlock reached out and brought my hair up, her other hand securing it in place with a chopstick from what had once been our breakfast.

I could get lost in how much we weren’t saying. Her bare feet were so loud as she moved where I couldn’t see her.

I didn’t know I could be so exposed. Not with her. Not when she had __known__  me, been inside me, been beside me--but never in this.    

So I sat with my legs closed tight and my arms around my stomach; bleeding my heart out through the scars on my back that were fresh as the day I got them.

I side eyed Sherlock as she walked back to her little set-up. She picked up the bottle of toner--and set the stopper back in place. Then with a **snap**  pulled off each glove. She made a point to see I was watching. _Scars need special care._ Then she returned to her spot and _touched me._

“Ichi”

touch

“Ni”

touch

“San”

touch

“Shi”

Twenty-seven in total. She took her bare fingers to all of them. Then she traced up and down again, moving from the nape of my neck to my hips, trailing every one. Firm but gentle. She treated my scars like braille. If she touched me long enough would she really know all of me? Could she, or was this simply curiosity? I knew I was supposed to be upset, but I couldn’t bring the emotion to surface.

“Tell me” she suddenly said.

“What?”

“How you got your scars. Tell me. I want to know.”

I closed my eyes and brought my head up.  

“My group was stationed in a small hospital between Hama and Daraa. The area was relatively peaceful by war standards. I had been placed in the pediatric area because the children took to female doctors better and there was less risk of coming into contact with violent soldiers.”

I took a breath.

“A little girl had been transferred earlier that day in shock and suffering from dehydration. Something about her drew me in. I kept checking in on her. I was standing over her when the first explosion went off. The blast blew shrapnel everywhere. Everyone started running, taking positions to moderate the damage. More explosions. I was supposed to be helping, but the little girl…. I got on top of her. I couldn’t do anything else. The blasts kept blowing more debris but I stayed frozen. I just remember looking at her face and being scared out of my mind, but her eyes were dead. She was already dead inside from all the violence. I was transferred back to Japan shortly after.”  

She didn't say anything at first.

“I can see. The scarring here was made at an angle. She would have been hit if you had left with the others.”

She wrapped her arms around my waist and brought her lips to my neck. When had she taken her dress off?

“This is nice. Do they hurt?”

“Sometimes. I imagine they’ll feel better once your all-healing-toner is used on them.”

She put her chin on top of my head

“You never should have been given my toner.”

I was suddenly chilled from the inside.  

"I was wrong. I knew you felt self-conscious, but you were never ashamed of them, were you?”

She cleared her throat and stared out the window with her cheek on the back of my head, still enveloping me with her body.

“I read an article about the psychology of asocial behaviors a few years ago. In many of the interviews conducted on willful injury, when asked how the participants felt about their scars, they explained that in many ways they hated their scarring. It made them different and it made interacting with ‘normal’ people difficult. They chose to hide so they could pretend to be ‘normal’, too. But more often than not they found themselves looking for other people wearing the same style of clothing or holding the same arm-full of supplies at the pharmacy.”

She moved away and took in my back once more.

“The circumstance may be different, but I could see that when I came in this morning. Your scars tell the story of what you’ve lived through. A story you’re proud of and one that helped bring you to me. You want people to see. You just never thought you would find anyone who would see them the way you do." Sherlock pressed her forehead into the space between my shoulder blades.

"I do"

A dam broke inside me. Everything came pouring out all at once. I was drowning, looking at myself from the inside. Disconnected but still aware of the waves of emotion overtaking me. Sherlock let it happen. I started to push her hands from my waist and she caught them in her own. Held on while I rocked back into her and grabbed at her palms like a lifeline.

I was a mess. Half-naked and sweating from trying to keep everything inside me. Breaths coming out like dry heaves. Sherlock held me through all of it and saw me. Maybe she always had and I never let myself see it. On some level, it registered that she was crying as hard as I was. Rocking me and trying to breath loud and slow so I’d have something to focus on when I started to come back to her. Somewhere along the line, the chopstick in my hair had come out; she kept pushing the hair from my eyes. She just as likely could have also thrown it away so it wouldn’t stab her or myself.     

 

 

 

Much later, after I had come down and we had sat picking off pieces of cold egg and sausage, I laid my head on the windowsill where I knelt on the couch and asked her the question that played in my mind almost every day.

"Do you think it was worth it?"

She stopped running her fingers through my hair and sat up. I could feel her eyes boring into the back of my head; then she walked out of the room and I heard her shuffling through one of the drawers in the kitchen.

She hesitantly came back in and with a soft stomp primed herself in front of me. In her hands was what appeared to be a piece of cardstock.

"Kento has a photographer friend recently back from Jordan. He was willing to have this photo sent in and a physical copy made. Ni-San thought you might like it when you were ready" She handed me the photo. 

A small group of children stood and knelt close to each other, each with their arms around the other as friends are prone to do, and smiling widely at the camera. My attention was drawn to one particular face just off center, a little older than I remembered, and very much _alive_. Inside and out. This couldn’t be real. I looked up at Sherlock, then back at her. She was the most beautiful little girl I had ever seen.

"I wasn’t sure if you were ready for it but maybe that’s not for me to decide…Turn it around"

On the back of the photo, in neat English letters with Sherlock's handwriting underneath was: Mrajeeb Al Fhood Refugee Camps first soccer team!

She gave me one of her smiles. 

"If that counts for anything.” She said, “Then yes, I’d say it was."

She still tasted like cucumber and saffron.

**Author's Note:**

> I keep reading what I write and finding things to change, but one of the first things I was taught was to never fully delete what I write. 
> 
> There's a part of me that's sorry you had to have read my work now when I'm inexperienced and new. But if I only kept what I wrote to myself then I would never change now, would I? 
> 
> Thank you fangirlingincloset for the prompt. 
> 
> And thank you, dear reader, for getting to the end of this fanfiction. If you have any suggestions or comments I would be much obliged.


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